Dec 31, 2013

Does This Tell Us Anything Useful?

The abstract of a Working Paper issued by Yonathan Ben-Shalom and Arif A. Mamun of Mathematica Policy Research, a big contractor for Social Security:

We follow a sample of working-age Social
Security Disability Insurance (DI) program
beneficiaries for five years after their first benefit award to learn how certain factors help or
hinder achievement of four return-to-work milestones: (1) enrollment for employment services
provided by a state vocational rehabilitation agency or employment network, (2) start of trial
work period (TWP), (3) completion of TWP, and (4) suspension or termination of benefits
because of work. We find that younger beneficiaries are more likely than older beneficiaries to
achieve the milestones and that substantial variation exists across
impairment types. In addition,
black beneficiaries and beneficiaries with higher levels of education have a greater probability of
achieving the milestones, everything
else equal. Also, such achievement is more probable if state
unemployment is low at the time of the award.
The probability of achieving the milestones is
reduced by having a higher DI benefit amount at
award, an award decision made at a higher
adjudicative level, and by receiving Supplemental Security Income
or Medicare benefits at the
time of DI award. Finally, we find large variation
in the relationships between state of residence
and return-to-work outcomes and between award month and return-to-work outcomes. We
attribute these variations to unobserved factors at
the state level, policy changes over time, and
trends in unobserved beneficiary characteristics.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

In last report that I can recall 1/2 of 1% of SSA disability beneficiaries returned to work successfully. SSA has invested a fortune and employed thousands in an effort to improve these numbers. It tells me that SSA continues to spend dollars without any real quantifiable success.